Yesterday the world lost a champion of the Venezuelan people, and voice for the oppressed every where, Hugo Chávez died after his 18-month battle with cancer. Who was Hugo Chávez? Chávez was a leader who transformed Venezuelan society. He made promises that he kept and was love by the poor for it. In 1994, after his failed attempt to take over the country, Chávez a military officer started the Fifth Republic Movement. The movement adopted Simón Bolívar, the Great Liberator and friend of the Haitian Revolution, as its "iconic hero" and "reference point." In the 1998 presidential election, he won 56.2% of the vote and started the new Bolivarian Revolution that he felt would secure Latin America's true independence from the outside world. He strengthened his support among the poor with a series of social initiatives known as the Bolivarian Missions and created a network of grass-roots workers' councils, called the Bolivarian Circles. The Bolivarian Missions set up medical clinics and schools, operated a chain of cut-rate grocery stores, and divvied up nationalized farms and ranches among cooperatives of the impoverished. Chávez nationalized scores of energy, banking and telecommunications companies in addition to more than 1 million acres of farmland. He was able to reduced poverty and gain bedrock supporters among Venezuela's poor through these policies that actually redistributed the nation's vast oil wealth. Daniel Hellinger, a political science professor at Webster University in St. Louis, said the welfare programs reduced Venezuela's poverty rate from close to 80% in the 1990s to about 20%, and wiped out illiteracy. "To millions of poor Venezuelans excluded from meaningful participation in politics, Chavez offered hope for a new kind of democracy that would open doors of government to them," Hellinger said. "However much the system fell short of that aspiration, it was Chavez who gave voice to it." In April 2002, hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against the Chávez government, mostly members of the growing middle class. The marchers advanced towards the palace, where they encountered government supporters, and a clash ensued. Journalist Phil Gunson wrote, "Shooting broke out on all sides. A score of civilians died and more than 150 suffered gunshot wounds. The military high command called for Chávez to resign, and at 3:20 the next morning they announced he had agreed to do so. The presidency was assumed by a business leader, Pedro Carmona, but his government collapsed in less than forty-eight hours and Chávez returned to power." Chávez's popularity due his policies had quashed a counterrevolution. This popularity has helped to repeatedly propel him to election victories, even his latest one, garnering 55% of the vote despite rising crime, persistent scarcities of basic food items, double-digit inflation and unpopular foreign aid programs. His reelection was a testament to the devotion of Venezuela's impoverished to the concrete material improvements in their lives under his leadership policies.

Venezuelans mourn the death of Chávez

As a time when the U.S. government decided to cut 25% from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, (LIHEAP) which would increase heating cost for the poor, Citgo Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, announced that it would be continuing its six-year-old program of providing heating oil to poor Americans free of charge. (Fortunately the initial requests of the Obama administration to cut the program’s funding to $2.5 billion were not carried out.) Citgo expected to help more than 400,000 Americans this year with a 100-gallon donation of heating oil and said that in addition to providing assistance to private citizens, Citgo would also provide assistance to 250 homeless shelters.

This was not the first time Venezuela has shown generosity to America's poor. After Hurricane Katrina had ravaged the Gulf Coast, Citgo donated a million dollars to disaster relief and President Hugo Chávez offered to send food, water, fuel, and other humanitarian assistance. The U.S. refused his offer however. That same year, in response to a call by 12 U.S. Senators for oil companies and oil producing nations to donate heating oil to help ease the pain of high prices caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Venezuela rose to the occasion once again. Despite criticism from the American government, the program has continued each winter since. And heating oil is not the only humanitarian assistance promoted by the Chávez government. Over the last decade, Venezuelan doctors, many of them trained in Cuba, have provided free medical care, including surgeries all around Latin America. In New York's South Bronx, Citgo has donated millions to support community building organizations, including natural food co-ops, environmentally sound recycling programs, and youth groups.

As the U.S. continues to export warfare and empire on the backs of its increasingly-struggling citizenry, and Venezuela exports doctors and free heating, long-held and infrequently-examined assumptions about U.S. benevolence were questioned. Chávez pointed out this contradiction, and in so doing was able to galvanized anti-American, anti-imperialist sentiment across the hemisphere. He roused Latin American opposition to the so-called Washington Consensus that developing nations should open their markets to free trade and foreign investors. He called President George W. Bush a terrorist for invading Afghanistan and the "devil" during a United Nations speech. He has forged close links with other socialist leaders in the hemisphere, including Bolivia's Evo Morales, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Chávez's relations, however, with the United States became less tense with the election of President Obama.

Hugo Chávez, who self-identified as an Afro Venezuelan

This has not stopped Obama from attacking him. Obama has cast aspersions on human rights and democracy in Venezuela – despite the fact that both have been strengthened immensely since the American-friendly two-party oligarchy that ran the country for decades was thrown out in Venezuela’s 1999 elections. No more are hundreds massacred in the streets of Caracas, nor do paramilitary death squads roam Venezuela murdering labor organizers – unlike in neighboring American ally Colombia. democracy has been upgrade since Chávez has taken the reins of power. President Obama has also criticized Venezuela’s ties to Cuba and Iran, saying "It is up to the Venezuelan people to determine what they gain from a relationship with a country that violates universal human rights and is isolated from much of the rest of the world." It is to the credit of Venezuela that it continues its relationship with one nation that often finds itself at odds with the rest of the world over human rights – the U.S. itself. (The two nations are tied by oil: Venezuela was the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the U.S. in 2011, averaging shipments of just under 1 million barrels a day.) Moreover, what give the U.S. the right to say who a sovereign nation should befriend. Didn't the U.S. maintain cordial relationship with South Africa, one of the most rogue nation's ever. And doesn't it continue to support Israel, another nation view by a majority of the world's nations, as rogue.

As the U.S. questions democracy in Venezuela, and around the world, there are those in the U.S. that question the state of democracy at home. While his critics point to his leadership style, saying it is reminiscent of Latin American caudillo, or military dictator, they forget he was democratically elected four times, and won several nationwide referendums. He closed TV and radio stations critical of him, armed a civilian militia and brought the bureaucracy under close control, detractors said. They argue he maintained his link to the poor partly through his weekly "Alo Presidente" television show, during which he performed much like a televangelist spreading the gospel of his revolution. But there are those that say U.S. Patriot Act and the use of military drones to kill American citizens is undemocratic. That the growth of the Military Industrial Complex, Prison Industrial complex, Big Pharma, Monsanto, Corporatocracy, all suggest the democracy has taken a back seat in America. But when all is said in done, Chávez's record will speaks for itself. It was a record that has style and substance. It was a record that transformed a nation.

Who was Hugo Chávez, you ask, he was an Afro-Venezuelan who made a real difference in his country; unlike the Afro-American leader of the U.S., who has style but no substance, he had both. And while one leader has helped lead millions out of poverty, the others heads a nation that is leading millions into poverty.

President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez has contributed $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who is a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover's film, which is still in planning.